MTA Traffic Spike for 8/28 Rally in D.C. September 1, 2010

According to a Metro spokesman, Washington Metro ridership spiked to 510,000 on August 28th, the day of Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally at the Lincoln Memorial. That spike indicates an increase of about 180,000 additional rides (one-way trips) over any other Saturday in D.C. this August, adding credence to estimates that the crowd approached 100,000 visitors, but seemingly refuting claims of far greater numbers (some up to 500,000) – but what’s the real number?

We’ll never know, but we can say a few things for certain: Attendence was huge, easily too big to be dismissed as a a minor rally or a fringe effort. Attendence was from all across the country – I personally saw five buses from Wyoming parked near the bus I rode in on from New Jersey, and I heard reports of attendees from as far away as Washington State that came in on buses, Alaska and Hawaii were represented as well, as well as members of the armed services from overseas bases.

Was it a half million attendees – I don’t know, I ran out of fingers and toes way too early to count them all, but I can say this about the Metro ridership – like many others, I walked from RFK Statium to the rally, but me and my fellow walkers were a minority of bus riders, not the majority, but after the rally the lines to get back to RFK Stadium were enormous – it took almost an hour to get on to the Smithsonian Station platform after the rally – many were put off by the lines and choose to walk back to the buses.